


Always

by wordbending



Series: Her Universe [1]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Trans Female Character, moms being moms, pearl being pearl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-29 13:02:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8490817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordbending/pseuds/wordbending
Summary: Even when the world is ending (or, perhaps, especially when the world is ending), Pearl is a gem who prefers the rigidity of strict routines.But when Steven disappears from the house without warning, Pearl discovers that routines are like people: they're always changing.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place directly before [Her Universe](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6489301). Like that fic, this is canon-divergent before the episode Super Watermelon Island. 
> 
> As always, this is basically an official-not-official prequel to [nagginggargoyle's](http://archiveofourown.org/users/nagginggargoyle/pseuds/nagginggargoyle) series [equilibrium](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5163491), which I definitely recommend you read!

Pearl was always the first one in the temple to be awake – which was a technicality, because she had only slept once in thousands of years, so to be accurate, she was _always_ awake – and she had routines. Sometimes her routines changed, like how since Steven had asked, she no longer spent the entire night quietly standing over Steven’s bed and inwardly being terrified his body would arbitrarily forget how to breathe, but overall, she liked the rigidity of a strict, well-established series of morning tasks.

Especially when this entire Peridot mess had thrown her routines completely out the window.

Steven had been overjoyed that she’d become an unofficial Crystal Gem – Pearl wasn’t sure how she felt about that yet, but if Steven was happy, she could tolerate it – but at the same time, he’d also become a lot more... melancholy, ever since his birthday. Garnet had suggested he’d gotten something called “homesickness,” which Pearl had been very adamant she couldn’t understand in any way, so they’d come up with the idea for him to spend a day or two back at the temple so he could recover.

While they hoped that Peridot could make progress on the drill before the Cluster decided to devour their entire tiny, fragile planet.

 _..._ Yes, Pearl thought. Routines were very good.

So she went through them – let Lion out if he was inside, let Lion in if he was outside, be quietly thankful if Lion was neither inside nor outside, sweep the floors, wash the dishes, swab the counters, make sure Steven’s vitamins were clearly visible on the countertop (she still had to thank Dr. Maheswaran for the suggestion about those), check that the fridge was stocked and the food was properly sealed and organized, pick up any of Steven’s clothes or toys he’d left lying around, pick up whatever Amethyst had left lying around, pick up Amethyst if necessary...

Halfway through picking up one of Steven’s dolls, the one with the ridiculously oversized hair and even more unnecessarily large sword that she kind of liked in spite of herself, she heard the sound of one of the temple doors opening and looked up. Amethyst was walking out of it, spinning one arm in a circle, twisting her head left and right.

"Morning, P."

“You should be careful..." she said, walking up to her and clapping her hands together. "I’ve read that kind of behavior is unhealthy for humans."

“Well, good thing I’m not one of those, huh?” Amethyst said back, hopping onto a stool and stretching her other arm. Pearl immediately felt a pang of anxiousness - had she offended her? - so she kept talking, saying the first thing that came to mind. Best not to act like she was... what was Amethyst's word for it? 'Nagging'?

"You're up early!”

“Got hungry,” replied Amethyst, spinning the stool towards the counter and scanning the counter for any of last night’s leftovers. Pearl immediately opened and then closed her mouth - there wasn't much point to reminding Amethyst that gems didn't have internal organs or, for that matter, muscles. “Is Steven up?”

“No, you know Steven... he’s probably still asleep. And don’t bother looking for that cake, I threw it out. It was starting to collect mold.”

Amethyst turned to look at her, squinting closely. Pearl blushed and looked towards a wall.

“W-what?” she stammered. “Amethyst, I hope I don’t have to remind you not to eat things that are gathering fungus."

“ _Probably?”_ shouted Amethyst, waving her arms. “When did _you_ start putting ‘Steven’ and ‘probably’ in the same sentence?"

"For quite a while now, actually!" Pearl huffed, mildly offended. "He's a growing boy, he's... he's... more independent now!"

Amethyst spun her stool back around and hopped off it.

“Whatever, I’m gonna wake him up,” she said. She went over to the couch and bounced off it up to the second floor. “Yooooo, Steven!”

Pearl sighed, setting the doll under her arm and crouching down to pick up another.

“Yo, Steven?” she heard Amethyst repeat from above, which gave Pearl pause. But she told herself it wasn’t anything to worry about – he was a heavy sleeper. “Steeeeeveeeennnn?”

Pearl heard a rustling of blankets, and then Amethyst muttered “oh, _crap.”_

For one moment, Pearl froze in place, feeling a sudden twist in her gem as if her whole form was threatening to destabilize. Before she even had time to recognize what she was doing, and only distantly aware she’d dropped all of Steven’s dolls, she was bounding up the staircase.

“I don’t know!” Amethyst shouted, taking a step backwards, and Pearl belatedly realized she had been shouting something – Amethyst looked terrified. “He’s just not here!”

Pearl looked towards Steven’s bed, empty except for the pile of blankets, and a thousand thoughts rattled through her mind – _this is all my fault, why didn’t I realize sooner, I should have been more careful, I’m so sorry Amethyst –_ but she could only manage to say one thing, so quietly it was almost a hiss.

“ _G_ _et Garnet."_

Amethyst visibly swallowed, then nodded. Her fists clenched and her eyes narrowed, she ran past Pearl, jumped down the entire staircase in one bound, and rushed towards the back of the temple. Pearl watched her for a moment, then collapsed into a heap, burying her head in her hands.

* * *

Pearl emerged from the bathroom for the third time, having yet again destroyed hours of careful organizing – she was going to have to rewash and refold all of the towels on the floor – and stared at Amethyst, who was picking up one of the kitchen stools with one hand and squinting at the bottom of it.

“You’re not helping,” snapped Pearl.

“I’m doing the _best I can,”_ Amethyst snapped back. Pearl flinched, and Amethyst's glare softened - she put the stool down with the kind of gentleness that only someone who’d accidentally thrown one through a window once could have. “It’s not like I haven’t looked everywhere else."

Pearl reached out a hand to her and opened her mouth, to apologize, but before she could, she saw Garnet standing on the other side of the front door and forgot about it completely.

“She’s back.”

Amethyst turned around, saw her as well, and raced towards the door. Pearl, who had already started sprinting for it before she had even consciously decided to, followed closely behind her.

“Did you...” Pearl and Amethyst started to say, simultaneously, the moment Amethyst threw the door open.

“No,” replied Garnet, and it was only from knowing Garnet as well as she did that Pearl could be reassured she was just as terrified about this as Pearl herself was. “I’ve spoken to all of Steven’s friends. None of them have seen him since yesterday.”

"What about Greg?"

Garnet shook her head.

"...Peridot?"

Again, Garnet shook her head.

Pearl saw Amethyst looking up at her, the worry clearly visible on her face, but Pearl was unable to look back at her. She glanced away, feeling like she would sink into the ground, which she actually might have if she didn't feel Garnet clap a gloved hand to her shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” said Garnet. “We’ll find him.”

Pearl nodded dimly.

“You sure you haven’t seen anything?” interrupted Amethyst, fists clenched to her chest. “You know, with your future vision?”

Garnet looked towards her, adjusted her glasses, and shook her head.

“I can see many things... but I can’t tell where Steven is,” she said, frowning. “I’m sorry.”

“We’ve looked everywhere,” said Pearl quietly. “If he’s not in the house, and he’s not in town, then...”

Pearl’s head jumped up, her eyes widening. Amethyst and Garnet looked up too, apparently having made the exact same realization.

“ _Rose’s room.”_

Pearl didn't hesitate before running towards it. She was on the door in a moment, not even paying attention to whether or not Amethyst or Garnet were following.

“Steven?!” she shouted, beating on the door with her small fists. “Steven, are you in there?! Steven, please, open the door!”

She knew it was pointless – could Steven even hear her? - but Pearl pulled her fist back, ready to hit it with everything she had. Something grabbed her arm before she could swing and Pearl, in shock, looked towards it and saw Amethyst, who let it go. Amethyst raised one fist, pointing to it with a smug smile, and Pearl understood immediately what she was suggesting: let me.

Pearl stepped back and Amethyst cracked her knuckles, stepped up, and readied a swing. She didn’t get to start the punch either - before she could, the door split apart from the middle, Rose’s symbol unfurling in a flash of bright pink light.

To Pearl’s immense relief, she saw Steven’s silhouette standing in it, but... it was shaped strangely. Taller, wider - she would have almost thought she was looking at Greg if it wasn't for the hair, set in ringlets that would have been distressingly familiar under any normal circumstance.

“Steven?!” said Pearl and Amethyst simultaneously as the light faded, revealing Steven in full, an expression on his face somewhere between stunned and horrified. Steven took one look at the two of them, and Garnet leaning against a wall a little ways behind them, and quickly took a step back.

The door closed just as quickly as it had opened.

“Ah,” said Garnet.

Pearl and Amethyst twisted around, throwing slack-jawed stares over their shoulders at her. Garnet merely adjusted her glasses again.

“Garnet, _”_ said Pearl, taking a deep breath and trying to not panic any further. "What is going on?"

“Yeah, what the heck?!” added Amethyst, throwing her hands in the air.

Garnet chuckled. “I don’t think it’s my place to say.”

Garnet started walking towards the door and Pearl and Amethyst stepped out of her way. Pearl quickly fell in step behind her, hovering over her shoulder, but Garnet only crouched down in front of the door, resting her hands on her knees.

“Steven,” said Garnet. “Can you hear me?”

“...yeah,” said Steven’s voice, after a moment, quiet even considering it was muffled by the door. “I’m... I’m sorry, Garnet, I... I just...”

“It’s alright, Steven. You don’t have to leave.”

Pearl bit her lip. Some much older, more instinctual part of her very much wanted to demand that Steven come out right this minute, but the rational part of her told her it was better to let them talk.

“I... I don’t?” Steven replied.

“No. You don’t,” said Garnet.

Steven didn’t say anything else, and neither did Garnet. Eventually, Pearl managed to break her gaze away from the door long enough to see Amethyst had walked away to lean against a wall, crossing her arms. Pearl continued to stand behind Garnet, her eyes all but locked on the door - Garnet didn't budge.

“Are... are Pearl and Amethyst still there?” Steven finally said, after what Pearl calculated was exactly two minutes, three seconds, and four-hundred and thirty-six milliseconds. Garnet leaned her head back, looking up towards Pearl, and then she turned just slightly to look towards Amethyst, who muttered something like "yep" under her breath.

“Yes,” said Garnet.

After a moment where neither Pearl or Amethyst moved, she added, “I’ll ask them to leave.”

Pearl glanced towards Amethyst, whose expression flashed from surprised to offended to a pout, all in a second. She walked off in a huff, kicking a foot against the floor. Pearl looked back towards Garnet, but she stayed frozen on the spot, her fingers wrung together so tightly that her gem had started to register it as pain.

“Garnet...” she said. Instead of replying, Garnet stood up. Pearl took a step back from her, but she didn’t so much as look in Pearl’s direction.

“Pearl.”

Pearl couldn’t even attempt to argue.

“...I understand,” she said, defeated. “I’ll go.”

With one long glance towards the door, she turned around and started to walk away.

She wasn't even sure where she was going. She could barely walk straight, or think straight, since she kept wanting to turn back and look at the door to Rose's room, to at least stay close enough to hear, to be sure Steven was still there. She just barely managed to focus enough to notice Amethyst standing outside on the porch, so she started to move towards her - it was as good a place to go as any.

Behind her, Pearl heard Garnet shift.

“They’re gone,” Garnet’s voice said.

“OK,” said Steven’s voice as Pearl walked outside, Amethyst holding the door open for her. 

* * *

"Do you... know what's going on already? With your future vision?"

"I have some ideas. But I can only see one of an infinite number of possibilities... it's up to you to decide what you do, or what you don't do."

"...Some ideas? Well, can you... give me any ideas what those ideas might be?"

"Ah, well. That would be telling."

"Garnet... you being all cool and mysterious isn't making this any easier..."

"I suppose it isn't, is it? Very well then - perhaps you wish to tell me a deep secret, one you have hidden in your heart for many years. Or, the truth could be that you wish to tell me something you have only just now learned about yourself. Perhaps you are afraid of how I will react, afraid I will judge you harshly. Or that others will judge you harshly, and you will lose the people that are closest to you.

Am I on the right track?"

"...Am I going to? To... lose the people that are closest to me?"

"No."

"Is that your future vision too?"

"No."

"But Garnet... how can you know for sure? I... I've never done anything like this before. What if they..."

"Steven."

"Y-yeah?"

"I think you already know the answer."

"...It's love, right?"

"Exactly."

"But Garnet... I mean, Pearl and Amethyst and you and Dad and Connie... of course they all love me a lot, but... I still... I don't know. I guess I'm just... scared."

"Steven... the first time that I became me, I was afraid too. There'd never been anything like me before - it had never been allowed. And those other gems, the Diamond that Ruby and Sapphire were sworn to protect, they made it clear that it would never _be_ allowed. That's why we became unfused again. We were too overwhelmed, too afraid of what would happen, of what they'd do."

"But you ran away. And you did it again."

"That's right. We did - I did. Even then, when I was alone, it felt like I was doing something forbidden, something I had to keep a secret at any cost. When your mother and Pearl found me, I was terrified... I thought for sure that, at any moment, either one of them would strike me down.

And yet, even though they didn't know me - even though _I_ didn't know me - they helped me find the courage to be true to myself. To live like this. And you know that we, your family, your friends - we'd all do the same for you."

"Even if... if being true to myself means...?"

"No matter what being true to yourself means."

"Well, it means... it means I'm a girl. I think?"

"It's alright to be unsure, Steven."

"No, no... I'm sure. I'm a girl. I'm... a girl? I'm a girl. Yeah! I'm a girl! I'm a _girl_! Hahaha!"

The door opened, and Steven stood behind it, striking a triumphant pose, her hands on her hips, her long red skirt billowing in non-existent wind, her chest held high, a determined smile on her face.

Garnet gave a thumbs up, smiling.

"Well then, Miss Universe, are you ready?"

"Yeah," she nodded. "I'm ready."

* * *

 “...And me and Steven are, like, best buds, you know?” Amethyst said, having flopped stomach-first over the side of the porch balcony. “I don’t see why he can’t talk to _me.”_  

From where she was sitting on the porch, Pearl stared out at the ocean. She made a non-committal mmm, barely listening – Amethyst had been ranting for however long the two of them had been out there (Pearl had lost track) and, from what little Pearl had noticed, had more or less been saying the same thing the entire time.

“Or why he can’t talk to you,” Amethyst snorted. “Since you’re, you know, his mom and all.”

“I am _not_ his mother,” Pearl said, but there was no bite in it - as much as she might have resented the comparison, it just didn't feel worth arguing over. "But I don't understand either. We'll just have to trust Garnet."

Amethyst rolled onto her back, waving her arm. “Garnet, Garnet, Garnet! We’re _always_ trusting Garnet – it’s not like _she’s_ his mom _either._ What makes her so special?!”

“She is our leader,” Pearl stated, in a this-should-be-obvious tone, but if Pearl was being entirely honest with herself, she was starting to wonder the same thing. She spent so much time taking care of Steven, watching over Steven, trying to teach Steven the ways of Gem technology and culture, or at least the good parts of it... what was it that made Steven trust Garnet so much? Why hadn’t Steven trusted her?

“... _Ipso_ _facto,”_ she added, dejectedly.

“Yeah, well, _ip_ _-_ _so whatever-o,_ I’m getting a little sick of it. And, you know, one other thing...”

Pearl heard, in the distance, the familiar sound of one of the temple's doors opening, and she instantly shot to her feet. Amethyst sat up, bouncing off the porch balcony in one motion, and she and Pearl shared a glance, Amethyst looking as unsure of what to do as Pearl felt.

Pearl looked towards the front door, and she could see Steven on the other side of the glass, walking towards it. Garnet was following just behind him. He had one of his there's-nothing-I-can't-do smiles on his face, at first, but the closer he came, the more his smile started to fade, the more his eyes looked towards the floor. Pearl wanted so desperately to just throw open the door herself, to throw her arms around him and tell him that whatever it was that had him looking that way, it was alright.

"Steven?" said Amethyst, and Steven looked up. He looked back towards Garnet, and Garnet nodded, and then he stepped forward, expression firm. The door swung open, and the very second there wasn't anything between them and the bigger, taller Steven, Amethyst had thrown her arms around him and Pearl had thrown hers around them both, nearly knocking him off his feet.

“Oh, Steven!” Pearl sobbed, squeezing him as tightly as she could, unable to stop herself from crying. She felt Amethyst shift as she started to squeeze him tighter as well. If she wasn’t mistaken, she also heard what might have been a muffled sob. “Steven, I’m so glad you’re alright... I was so worried!”

“Guys...” Steven managed to say, with some effort. “Guys, it’s OK! I’m fine!”

“Steven, what happened?” Pearl asked, half of her wanting to break the hug to look at him, the other half of her never wanting to let go of Steven ever again. The latter half won. “Why were you in your mother’s room?”

“It’s... it’s complicated?” Steven replied, gasping for air. “Please let me breathe.”

Begrudgingly, Pearl released her grip and stepped away. She felt the instinct to crouch down to Steven’s height, to look him straight in the eyes, but Steven had shot up so far that she didn’t have to. If she wasn’t as worried as she was, she might have been proud to have seen him finally grown after so many years – he was even taller than his little friend Connie now.

“I’m sorry, Steven,” she said, turning away and brushing a tear from her cheek. She looked back towards Steven, running the same hand through her hair. “But... you’re sure you’re alright? You weren’t trapped in there? Nothing hurt you?”

“And why are you taller again?” Amethyst piped up, still pressed against Steven’s midsection. She’d loosened her grip just enough to be able to talk, to look up at Steven in amazement, but she was making no effort to actually let go - not that Pearl could blame her, since she'd be doing the same thing if he hadn't just asked her not to.

"Amethyst," said Pearl, and Amethyst looked over at her and, apparently having got the message of "let him breathe," finally backed away.

“I told you, it’s... complicated,” Steven mumbled, brushing off his blouse and his skirt, adjusting his hairband. Pearl hardly found that reassuring, especially when Steven started frowning and looking down at his hands, pressing his index fingers against each other. “I was... finding myself.”

Pearl squinted at him – humans could be error-prone, but she was pretty sure even they couldn’t manage to misplace their physical forms. She saw Amethyst cross her arms and nod, apparently having understood something she hadn’t, which only confused Pearl further.

“I’m not following,” said Pearl.

Amethyst looked over at her presumably confused expression and scoffed. “Geez, P, don’t be so literal.”

“It’s a figure of speech,” Garnet added, helpfully.

Pearl opened her mouth to snap that she understood what a figure of speech was, thank you, but Steven interrupted.

“Anyway!” he said, waving his hands in front of himself as if trying to push the tension out of the room. “What I was trying to say is I was... figuring some stuff out. In my mom’s room? It’s kind of hard to explain, but I guess what I’m getting at is...”

Steven turned to look up, once again, at Garnet standing just behind him. Garnet nodded, and Steven swallowed and nodded back before turning once again towards Pearl and Amethyst.

“I’m a girl?” Steven said, shrugging at them with the same type of grin he - _she_ , Pearl immediately mentally corrected - might have used if she was confessing she'd accidentally unbubbled a gem monster.

Pearl swallowed back a laugh - that was it? After all that?

"What's a girl?" said Amethyst, her head cocked.

"Oh, it's part of some human social construct," Pearl started to explain, thankful for the distraction. "I have no idea what purpose it serves - as far as I can understand, humans have always just had some strange impulse to sort themselves into these arbitrary categories."

Pearl barely registered Steven's cheeks turning pink.

"Uh, sure?" said Amethyst. "But you still haven't told me what it _is._ "

"To be quite honest, I have no idea," Pearl shrugged. "It's so difficult for me to keep track of what colors and fabric shapes humans use to categorize themselves these days - it seems like they're always changing -"

“ _Pearl,”_ Garnet said sharply, and Pearl swallowed back the next torrent of words when she saw Garnet frowning. Garnet cocked her head towards Steven, whose eyes were starting to water, and if Pearl understood one figure of speech at that moment, it was the one about her figurative heart sinking into her figurative stomach.

This was absolutely no time to panic, she told herself. She moved over by Steven’s side in an instant, gently wrapping her arms around her neck and resting her head on Steven’s shoulder.

“Oh, Steven,” she said, pulling herself as tightly to her as she could. “I’m so, so sorry. I should have realized how important it was to you...”

“It _is_ important _,”_ Steven sniffled, rubbing at her eyes. “I know it probably sounds... sounds weird, but it's not... it's not _arbitrary._ It was... really hard for me to figure this out. It means a lot to me."

“I'm so sorry," Pearl repeated gently. "I was being... insensitive."

She backed away to look into Steven’s eyes, to lay one hand on her cheek. Steven blinked away tears, but she managed to stare firmly back, even as her lower lib started to wobble.

“Listen, Steven... I promise, I don't think this is 'weird'. This is the least 'weird' thing about you."

Steven’s frown deepened, and she looked at Pearl quizzically. Pearl realized she’d said the wrong thing, and a not at all small part of her instantly thought _as always,_ but she pressed on.

“What I mean is... you’re completely one of a kind, Steven. You’re the first offspring of a human and a gem, yes, but you’re also so... you. You may have your mother’s gem, but in so many ways, you’re just as different from her as you are alike. And you’re so different from other humans, from other gems - the way you protected that Centipeetle, and talked to Peridot at the Kindergarten, and even how you made friends with Lapis... that's not to mention your, er, rather unconventional battle strategies...”

Pearl waved her hand, trying to regain focus.

“The point is, you being ‘weird’ is what makes you so wonderful, Steven. Nothing you did could ever, not for a single second in an infinite number of years, make me think less of you. But this? This isn't strange at all."

"Really?" Steven asked.

"Of course not," Pearl continued, shaking her head. "Your mother was the same way. When we - your mother and I - came to Earth, we had no concept of gender, not even the words to describe it. But humans started to call us 'she', 'her', 'miss,' and so on, and your mother... you should have seen the joy on her face whenever she heard those words about herself. It was..."

She smiled, staring down at her hands.

"As happy as I'd ever seen her. I didn't understand it at all, but the way she talked about it... how freeing it was, how much individuality and diversity there was among humans and human cultures, how much she wished that all Gems were given the chance to choose what kind of people they wanted to be, or just to do what made them feel comfortable and happy... it was hard not to follow in her footsteps."

Steven still seemed confused, downcast, and Pearl swallowed, feeling more and more like she was failing her when she needed her most.

 "But I'm... I'm not following in my mom's footsteps. This is just _..._ me. _"_

 _"_ No, no, that's not what I meant at all!" Pearl said quickly, waving her hands. "I was just trying to say that your mother would have been absolutely overjoyed to see you being true to who you are like this. And I'm happy for you too. I may not understand it, not completely, but... there's a lot of things I don't understand, in all honesty. If it makes you happy, Steven, that's all I need to know."

 Steven's eyes started to water again, but there was a small smile on her face this time.

"So you... you support me?"

"Always," Pearl replied, smiling back, and Steven's composure finally broke completely - tears, thick and heavy, started to roll down her cheeks. Quickly, almost automatically, Pearl wrapped her arms around Steven's neck and pulled her back into another hug, feeling tears pricking at her own eyes.

"I really am sorry for going on like that, instead of giving you my support right away. I just... I know it isn't, but it had seemed so _small_ _._ I'd been so scared when you disappeared! I didn’t know what had happened to you, or where’d you gone, or why your form had changed, or anything! I even thought you might have regenerated!”

“R-regenerated?” Steven mumbled, her already strained voice muffled by Pearl’s shoulder.

“Well, I don’t know if you even _can_ regenerate, and I don’t particularly want to find out,” Pearl replied quickly. “But this is... like that, isn’t it? After some time and careful thought, you’ve taken the form you want for yourself?”

Pearl felt Steven nod.

“Yeah,” Steven agreed with a sniffle. Pearl couldn't see her face, but she could almost hear her ear-to-ear smile. “Yeah, it is like that.”

“I’m just so glad you weren’t hurt,” Pearl said, smiling herself.

“But if you ever _do_ figure out regenerating,” Amethyst’s voice cut in, and Pearl gasped for air as she felt two huge arms encircle her and Steven and squeeze tightly. “I've got some pro tips!”

“Amethyst,” said Pearl dryly, while Steven only started to giggle. Her giggle turned into a full peal of laughter as another, even larger set of arms wrapped around her, Pearl, and Amethyst and lifted all three of them into the air. “Garnet!”

“Group hug!” Steven shouted excitedly.

“I thought one was called for,” Garnet agreed from below them, grinning.

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you once again to [nagginggargoyle](http://archiveofourown.org/users/nagginggargoyle/pseuds/nagginggargoyle) for helping me beta this fic! Without her help, not to mention her inspiring these fics in the first place, you probably wouldn't be reading this.


End file.
